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    • Issue #25 Fiction Spring 2023 >
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    • Issue #25 Nonfiction Spring 2023 >
      • Kalie Johnson Spring 2023
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Laura Merleau

In Different Parts of DNA Simultaneously


Ready to be joined with those
On the other side, with nobody
More than eight miles from the center

You left the largest
Part of yourself empty or sometimes
Produced by up to seven layers
Of slightly transparent color

Leaving room for eight tomorrows

But there were no planes
For Russia for three
Hours which the EPA was phasing out
In white retail space

Could such a strong detachment
Be overcome – now you
Wear only light, then you did
Not appear burrowed in mud

Drawing out the cancer the way
All 305 images of a cure
Yanked on the other
End of the polymerase chain reaction

Yet in the middle there is
Almost nothing
Happening except
The pilot transporting hearts

Because you’re leaving for Moscow
Tomorrow at temperatures mere
Billionths of a degree above absolute zero
Above existential shame, original
Sin, post-industrial sexuality
And extraterrestrial fashion

Making sure I’m the only
Channel for all your pleasure
No doubt soon going above
Or beyond the snowswept streets

All the way to the tippy tips of
Your fingers and toes and deities
Whose arms and legs froze
Simply because they knew

​Everything
​

Joy

                                          
I went looking for you
On a day so unlike today
Around a dome whose solid interior
Space has been eternally
Sealed off from play

My ignorance of time
Offset by my lust for flying

If the sun were shining with
Plenty of blame to go around like now
Maybe I’d have crash-landed
A couple of years and 500,000 feathers later
In a more remote or historically
Neutral part of town

Still I can’t shake the feeling that backward
Aerials could be repeated to infinity

Within lacework and zigzags
Radically relearning
How to withstand ocean deprivation
Deeper and deeper I fell
Through irregular tiers of even
Lighter veils

This is where your book always smiles
​
Certain scribes caught sight of us naked in the sky
But could not believe their eyes
And copied on

Bruised, bandaged, gauges missing
I would soon join their song

We had all the dreams
Like the one where nothing
Ever ends

While the geometric clarity
Of your whole design
Disappeared behind a honeycomb
Of ever-multiplying cells framed by tiny
Arches that hang like stalactites
From my ceiling
And the web
Of cracks covering nearly every bone
Record the shame and suffering
​My wings should outgrow

Great Gam-Equipped Perfume Bottles


From knotted graves uncovered
By a drenching rain

Without disturbing the delicate quantum
State of their atoms

Take a small handful
Of mallow and plantain leaves

And pain surrounded
By flapping doves

And pain so self-evident
It silences the dobermen

Ascribe the third
Angel to the laws
Of thermodynamics

Like someone coming
Out of image
Deprivation

It’s love that’s indifferent
To your brain

Consumed
To a thickness in a sufficient quantity
Of rose water until

It is consumed to a
Thickness

From one ounce and a half
Of oil of roses

Just-say-no sing-alongs
Are unlikely to make
A dent in this chain

Whitecapes driven
By relentless winds
From the north broke

At the foot of the volcano

Where three-fingered hands
Work the keys:

I will return, I will return

In a town where acacias bloom
Sit there computing for ten minutes

For over a hundred jeers
The islands out there in flames

A statue of the deposed plutocrat powdered
With ash on all eight wings

 



--
Laura Merleau lives in Waterloo, Illinois. Her novella Little Fugue was published by Woodley Memorial Press in 1993. Her poems have recently appeared or will soon appear in Ragazine, The Los Angeles Review, and Qarrtsiluni.

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  • Home
  • About
    • Our Story
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  • Issue 23 Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Art Spring 2022 >
      • Jonathan Kvassay Spring 2022
      • Karyna McGlynn Spring 2022
      • Andrea Kowch Spring 2022
      • Layla Garcia-Torres Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Poetry Spring 2022 >
      • Robin Gow Spring 2022
      • T.D. Walker Spring 2022
      • Jen Schalliol Huang Spring 2022
      • Yvonne Zipter Spring 2022
      • Carrie McGath Spring 2022
      • Lupita Eyde-Tucker Spring 2022
      • Susan L. Leary Spring 2022
      • Kate Sweeney Spring 2022
      • Rita Mookerjee Spring 2022
      • Erin Carlyle Spring 2022
      • Cori Bratty-Rudd Spring 2022
      • Jen Karetnick Spring 2022
      • Meghan Sterling Spring 2022
      • Lorelei Bacht Spring 2022
      • Michael Passafiume Spring 2022
      • Jeannine Hall Gailey Spring 2022
      • Phil Goldstein Spring 2022
      • Michael Mingo Spring 2022
      • Angie Macri Spring 2022
      • Martha Silano Spring 2022
      • Vismai Rao Spring 2022
      • Anna Laura Reeve Spring 2022
      • Jenny Irish Spring 2022
      • Marek Kulig Spring 2022
      • Jami Macarty Spring 2022
      • Sarah A. Rae Spring 2022
      • Brittney Corrigan Spring 2022
      • Callista Buchen Spring 2022
      • Issam Zineh Spring 2022
      • MICHAEL CHANG Spring 2022
      • henry 7. reneau, jr. Spring 2022
      • Leah Umansky Spring 2022
      • Cody Beck Spring 2022
      • Danyal Kim Spring 2022
      • Rachel DeWoskin Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Fiction Spring 2022 >
      • Melissa Boberg Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Nonfiction Spring 2022 >
      • Srinaath Perangur Spring 2022
      • Audrey T. Carroll Spring 2022
  • Issue #24 Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Art Fall 2022 >
      • Marsha Solomon Fall 2022
      • Edward Lee Fall 2022
      • Harryette Mullen Fall 2022
      • Jezzelle Kellam Fall 2022
      • Irina Greciuhina Fall 2022
      • Natalie Christensen Fall 2022
      • Mark Yale Harris Fall 2022
      • Amy Nelder Fall 2022
      • Bette Ridgeway Fall 2022
      • Ursula Sokolowska Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Poetry Fall 2022 >
      • William Stobb Fall 2022
      • e Fall 2022
      • Stefanie Kirby Fall 2022
      • Lisa Ampleman Fall 2022
      • Will Cordeiro Fall 2022
      • Jesica Davis Fall 2022
      • Peter O'Donovan Fall 2022
      • Mackenzie Carignan Fall 2022
      • Jason Fraley Fall 2022
      • Barbara Saunier Fall 2022
      • Chad Weeden Fall 2022
      • Nick Rattner Fall 2022
      • Cynthia Schwartzberg Edlow Fall 2022
      • Summer J. Hart Fall 2022
      • Daniel Suá​rez Fall 2022
      • Sara Kearns Fall 2022
      • Millicent Borges Accardi Fall 2022
      • Liz Robbins Fall 2022
      • john compton Fall 2022
      • Esther Sadoff Fall 2022
      • Whitney Koo Fall 2022
      • W. J. Lofton Fall 2022
      • Rachel Reynolds Fall 2022
      • Kimberly Ann Priest Fall 2022
      • Annie Przypyszny Fall 2022
      • Konstantin Kulakov Fall 2022
      • Nellie Cox Fall 2022
      • Jennifer Martelli Fall 2022
      • SM Stubbs Fall 2022
      • Joshua Bird Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Fiction Fall 2022 >
      • Otis Fuqua Fall 2022
      • Hannah Harlow Fall 2022
      • Natalia Nebel Fall 2022
      • Kate Maxwell Fall 2022
      • Helena Pantsis Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Nonfiction Fall 2022 >
      • Courtney Ludwick Fall 2022
      • Anna Oberg Fall 2022
      • Acadia Currah Fall 2022
  • Issue #25 Spring 2023
    • Issue #25 Art Spring 2023 >
      • David Carter Spring 2023
      • Annabel Jung Spring 2023
      • Ryota Matsumoto Spring 2023
      • Leah Oates Spring 2023
      • Eve Ozer Spring 2023
      • Emily Rankin Spring 2023
      • Esther Yeon Spring 2023
    • Issue #25 Poetry Spring 2023 >
      • Emma Bolden Spring 2023
      • Ronda Piszk Broatch Spring 2023
      • M. Cynthia Cheung Spring 2023
      • Flower Conroy Spring 2023
      • Jill Crammond Spring 2023
      • Sandra Crouch Spring 2023
      • Satya Dash Spring 2023
      • Rita Feinstein Spring 2023
      • Dan Fliegel Spring 2023
      • Lisa Higgs ​Spring 2023
      • Dennis Hinrichsen ​Spring 2023
      • Mara Jebsen ​Spring 2023
      • Abriana Jetté ​Spring 2023
      • Letitia Jiju ​Spring 2023
      • E.W.I. Johnson ​Spring 2023
      • Ashley Kunsa ​Spring 2023
      • Susanna Lang ​Spring 2023
      • James Fujinami Moore Spring 2023
      • Matthew Murrey Spring 2023
      • Pablo Otavalo Spring 2023
      • Heather Qin ​Spring 2023
      • Wesley Sexton ​Spring 2023
      • Ashish Singh ​Spring 2023
      • Sara Sowers-Wills ​Spring 2023
      • Sydney Vogl ​Spring 2023
      • Elinor Ann Walker Spring 2023
      • Andrew Wells Spring 2023
      • Erin Wilson Spring 2023
      • Marina Hope Wilson ​Spring 2023
      • David Wojciechowski Spring 2023
      • Jules Wood Spring 2023
      • Ellen Zhang Spring 2023
      • BJ Zhou Spring 2023
      • Jane Zwart Spring 2023
    • Issue #25 Fiction Spring 2023 >
      • Eleonora Balsano Spring 2023
      • Callie S. Blackstone Spring 2023
      • Daniel Deisinger Spring 2023
      • CL Glanzing Spring 2023
      • Janine Kovac Spring 2023
      • Jeremy T. Wilson Spring 2023
      • Richie Zaborowske Spring 2023
    • Issue #25 Nonfiction Spring 2023 >
      • Kalie Johnson Spring 2023
      • Amanda Roth Spring 2023